Chapter Three Cha Jing

On Production

Tea harvest takes place in February, March and April (According to Calendar in Tang Dynasty).

Stout and bold sprouts grow among decayed stones. Its height reaches up to four or five inches. When fern and brake (wild vegetable in general) starts to emerge from the soil, picking takes place in early morning when sprouts are still covered with dew. Second class tea is mostly collected from upstanding branches growing from thick tea bushes. Tea is not picked on rainy day or cloudy days, only on sunny days. The harvested tea is later steamed in steam basket, pounded by a mortar, compressed in a mold, baked, pierced through and then wrapped. When all procedures have been performed, tea is fully processed.

Tea varies in shape and quality. The best quality leaves must have creases like the leather boots of a Tatar horseman, curl like the dewlap of a mighty bullock, unfold like a mist rising from a ravine, gleam like a lake touched by a zephyr and are wet and soft like fine earth freshly swept by the rain. Inferior quality tea and old tea are made of hardly pounded tea leaves, rough like bamboo screen; some is made of dried tea leaves and stalks, deformed and withered like frozen lotus leaves. 

Seven procedures are performed from tea harvest to package. Tea is graded into eight levels, top level has leaves that crease as that of leathern boots, inferior level tea has leaves that are as withered as that of frozen lotus leaves. An inferior way that some people use to distinguish good from bad tea is by judging its appearance in terms of being shiny, dark, flat and even.(that would be good tea) Another inferior way to distinguish good from bad tea is by judging its appearance in terms of being crimpy, yellow and scraggy. The best way to distinguish good tea from bad tea is to both notice both its excellence and its defects. Why is it so? Tea cake shines when through compression the liquid is expelled, crimpy when the liquid is withheld. Tea is dark when it is made overnight, yellow when it is made the same day (as the harvest). Tea is flat and even when it is compressed tightly, scraggy when it is left to take its own course. It is the common characteristic between tea and herbaceous leaves. The skill of identifying the quality of tea is passed on orally.